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GUARDIAN ANGEL, My Story, My Britain, charts the journey of a journalist and writer who moved from darling of the left to champion of the moral high ground. This memoir of her personal and professional life
reflects the cultural changes in society over more than three decades.

The book is among the opening titles released by Melanie's new
publishing company, Melanie Phillips Electric Media. It can be purchased
from emBooks.com as well as from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and iBooks.

Melanie’s updates by email

Journalism? No, cruelty and propaganda

It appears that before Egypt passed Gilad Shalit over to the
Israelis today, it subjected him to ten minutes of cruel and inhuman treatment
of its own. Further details have emerged of the interview with Shalit carried
out by Egyptian TV interviewer Shahira Amin. Many have commented on how ill at
ease Shalit appeared during that interview. Now it turns
out that standing behind Shalit’s chair as he answered the questions was a
man in fatigues and wearing a black face mask and the green headband of the
Qassam brigades – Hamas’s military wing – and with a video camera in his hand.

As for the interview itself, it was clearly designed as a
propaganda exercise for the Arab masses. To ask such exploitative questions of
someone who had just been released from five years’ captivity, who was clearly
in a fragile state (he said so, and he subsequently fainted in the helicopter on the way to the Israeli air force base) and thus to delay his
transfer to the Israelis and the reunion with his family, was itself a kind of
torture. But as this
report in the Jerusalem Post reveals, some of Amin’s questions amounted in
addition to bullying which in the circumstances was as cruel and inhuman as it
was, quite simply, totally detached from the reality of Shalit’s hermetically
sealed captivity:

'“During all that time of captivity, you did just one video
to tell the world and your family that you're alive,” she tells the soldier.
“Why just once? Why didn't it happen again?” Rather than letting him
answer, however, Schalit’s Hamas minder-cum-interpreter scolds Amin for asking
the same question twice (a peculiar accusation, given the footage shows the
question hadn’t been asked before).

‘The resulting argument between interviewer and minder is one of the
interview's more regrettable scenes. Amin says Schalit appears unwell, and
“that's why I'm asking the question again” - as if drilling him repeatedly will
have a salutary effect. The question is itself absurd, roughly tantamount to
asking a hostage victim why he or she didn't escape sooner.

‘... Amin proceeds to ask Schalit what “lessons” he learned in
captivity. After asking for the question to be repeated, he says he believes a
deal could have been reached sooner. Here the Hamas minder renders his response
as praise for reaching a deal “in such short time”- a mistranslation repeated
by the BBC’s own interpreter.

‘”Gilad, you know what it’s like to be in captivity," Amin continues as
the painful charade drags on. “There are more than 4,000 Palestinians still
languishing in Israeli jails. Will you help campaign for their release?”

‘Schalit's answer, after a few seconds’ stunned silence, is superior: “I'd be
very happy if they were released,"”he says, then adds the caveat,
“provided they don't return to fighting Israel.”’

‘Again, the Egyptian interpreter fails to translate the sentence's second
clause, and again the omission is repeated by the BBC's translator, though he
too was apparently translating from Hebrew in real-time. ‘I will be very happy
for the prisoners to go free, so that they can be able to go back to their
families, loved ones and territory. It will give me great happiness if this
happens,’ the BBC’s interpreter relays.’

Ah, the BBC. In the video clip on this BBC News web page,
Jon Donnison interviews one of the freed Hamas terrorists, Ahmad Abu Taha, and
says to him:

‘You are 31 years old, ten years in prison, serving a
life sentence for being a member of Hamas. I mean, how do you feel today?”

But in 2002, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote
brief descriptions of terrorist detainees it had captured including Ahmad Abu
Taha. This is what the MFA said about him:

‘Ahmed Abd Al Karim Ali Abu Taha was born in 1980 and
resides in Ramallah. Abu Taha was involved in preparing explosives for Hamas
terrorists in Ramallah, including the car bomb that exploded in Giva’at Ze’ev
in Jerusalem on 29 July 2001. A member of the Ibrahim Abu Rub and Ballal
Baraguti organizations, he transported the suicide bomber Ra’ad Baraguti from
Ramallah to Jerusalem, where he exploded on Hanevi’im Street on 4 September
2001 and injured 14 people.’

So it seems he was jailed for rather more than merely being
a member of Hamas. But hey, what’s a little thing like the facts when you’re interviewing
a Hamas celebrity? And why spoil the story of the party atmosphere in Gaza with
the disobliging news that the happy and smiling Hamas celebrity in question had
been instrumental in terrorist attacks against Israelis?

At a meeting in Washington DC today the BBC’s Chief
Operating Officer, Caroline Thomson, was hymning the BBC’s values and boasting
that 54 per cent of people in the UK think the BBC is trustworthy and 58 per
cent that it is accurate. This was, she said, an ‘awesome responsibility’ to
live up to. It would be interesting to know whether the Donnison interview
meets her exacting standards.

Still, it could be worse: the BBC might have employed
Shahira Amin.

About Melanie

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known
for her controversial column about political and social issues which
currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for
journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an
acclaimed study of Britain's educational and moral crisis, which
provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of
parents.